The Path to Insanity
by TheLegitDoltGreetsYou
Summary: Dipper tried. God knew Dipper tried. But the madness... the weirdness... it was just too much. And so he basked in its glory. Rated T for character death and other dark concepts. Chapter 5: about one fourth done
1. Afterlife

BILL HAS DONE IT. HE HAS PINE TREE AND SHOOTING STAR IN ONE HAND AND SIXER AND STAN IN THE OTHER.

NOW, FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT IN SELECTING WHO TO KILL. BUT THERE REALLY WAS NO SEECTION "EENIE..." BILL'S EYES SHOWED A PINE TREE.

"MEENIE..." BILL'S EYES FLASHED TO SHOOTING STAR.

"MINY..." A PINE TREE.

"YOU!" BILL'S EYES PAUSED ON A SHOOTING STAR. HE STARTED CRUSHING MABEL WITH HIS HAND, PURPOSEFULLY APPLYING NO FORCE TO PINE TREE.

"STOP!" SIXER CRIED HOARSELY. BILL'S EYES STOPPED FLASHING AND TURNED TO HIM.

"I'LL GIVE IT TO YOU." SIXER LOOKED AT HIM PLEADINGLY. "JUST LET THEM GO."

BILL LAUGHED. NOT AT A VICTORY, BUT AT THE FUTILITY OF THE RUSE. OBVIOUSLY, THIS WAS STANLEY, A REALLY RETARDED ATTEMPT SWITCHEROO, WITH SIX FINGERED GLOVES ON. THEY... THEY REALLY THOUGHT THEY COULD FOOL BILL CIPHER... THE OMNIPOTENT GOD... WITH A GLOVE? A GODDAMNED GLOVE? "AHAHAHAHAHA! I KNEW YOU WOULD DO IT SIXER!"

HE TOOK STAN'S OUTSTRETCHED HAND AND SHOOK IT GINGERLY. IMMEDIATELY, HE WAS PLUNGED INTO THE WHITENESS OF STAN'S DREAMSCAPE.

"AT LAST!" HE SCREAMED FOR NO REASON. PRETENDING THAT HE WON WAS EASY. "HAHAHAHAHA!" SOME MENACING LAUGHTER. STAN'S DREAMSCAPE WAS NOWHERE AS COMPLEX AS SIXER'S. THERE WERE LITERALLY ONE SINGLE DOOR. IT WAS ALSO RED. LAUGHING MANIACALLY FOR NO REASON, BILL FLOATED TOWARDS THE LONE ERECT GATE AND SLAMMED IT OPEN.

REVEALING STANLEY PINES. NOT STANFORD PINES. HE WAS PLAYING THIS WEIRD PING PONG BALL GAME FOR LOSERS.

WHOA

"WHAT? IMPOSSIBLE! THE DEAL'S OFF!" BILL COULD PRETEND TO LOSE PRETTY JUST AS WELL AS THE OTHER THING. HE EXTENDED HIS HAND, CONJURED UP A BLUE ENERGY BEAM TO KILL STAN, BUT SUBSEQUENTLY EXTINGUISHING IT TO GIVE STAN THE IMPRESSION THAT HIS POWERS ARE GONE TOO. PRETENDING TO LOSE, AGAIN.

HE AND STAN PROCEEDED TO HAVE A CONVERSATION. HE FEIGNED DESPERATION, AND STAN THOROUGHLY THOUGHT BILL WAS DEFEATED. THEN STAN PUNCHED BILL IN THE GUT AND EVERYTHING WENT BLACK.

* * *

Bill really doesn't approve of the Axolotl's opinions on decor. Pink sky and cotton candy clouds? Really? A dream demon's realm was supposed to be horrifying and send shivers down your spine, not a little girl's wet dream.

"Axel. Hey." Bill twirled his cane playfully.

"Mason." The Axolotl greeted him back. "Did your despicable plan fail?"

"Don't call me that."

"Why do you not like that name? It's cute. Was it, uh, too masculine for you?" the Axolotl's lips didn't move, but it was obvious he was teasing Bill.

"Well, there we go again, Axel. This is why no one talks to you. You bully people." Bill poked Axolotl's eyes.

"You call this bullying, Dipper?" Axolotl swatted the cane away. "No wonder Mason was too masculine for you. Alright, no more playing. I'll fulfill our promise, even through you what, tried to collapse an entire planet. Don't do that again. So, where do you want to respawn?"

"God damn it, Axel, don't make this sound like Minecraft. Take me, uh, let's see, where did I use to live? Ah, yes. Piedmont, California, the house. It's time to get rid of Mabel."

The Axolotl nodded. "See ya tomorrow."

Everything went black again."

* * *

I'm back.


	2. Gravity Falls

The time is different because I'm too lazy to do research and figure out what technology was available in 2012 and how everything worked. So yeah, everything is shifted up four years.

* * *

The freshman year meh for Dipper. He had actually gotten some social skills from the puberty cycle, and he actually made some friends. Den, a nerd. Al, a gamer girl. She was cool. Dipper has a stupid crush on her.

They were going the way of Grunkle Ford and Stan. Dipper had always gotten straight As, but Mabel... not so much. Sure, Mabel was intelligent, but she had always prefered vandalizing lockers with glitter and writing puppet shows to impress boyfriends.

That was before... well, that thing happened.

Mabel had sneaked a camera in her hair and an audio receptor in her ear, attempting to have Dipper help her cheat in the finals. Then, in a turn of events, some retard turned all the sprinkler in the school on. The sprinkler fried the microphone on her ears, and, somehow, electrified her face. The Pines family sued, won, but Mabel was accused of academic dishonesty and failed the entire freshman year.

During sophomore year, things got worse.

All of Mabel's friends gradually left her. Dipper tried cheer her up, but there was nothing he could do to wash the taste of reality from her tongue. She failed her classes, she had no one except for Dipper and Waddles.

Then Waddles died. Pigs and their short fucking lifespan.

Dipper took the news pretty harshly too, but that was nothing compared to how Mabel had felt. She shut herself in her room for days, skipping meals and leaving really early for school and returning late. Dipper tried to approach her at school, but was promptly ignored.

This continued for two weeks. In those two weeks, Dipper had been more scared than he had been ever in his life, including at Weirdmageddon. Scenarios flashed in is mind. What if Mabel was doing drugs? What if Mabel didn't care about him anymore? What if Mabel… killed herself?

And that's exactly what happened. On May 18th, 2021, Mabel Pines put a bullet in her head, right in front of the Pines family dining room.

* * *

At the summer, he and Mabel was supposed to go to Gravity Falls. That was supposed to be the second summer they had there. But... it was only Dipper's summer now. God, it hurts him to think about it. At least Den will come two days later with his parents since the bus had been full or something. Den'll be staying here for a month and then going back to go to some violent video games summer camp or something.

The first day was a blur. Everyone dropped by to say hi to him except for Candy and Grenda. Good; Dipper didn't like them that much anyways. Dipper forced himself to smile, gave Wendy her hat back, but Wendy claimed that she lost Dipper's hat. He had hated every single second of it, but he think he did a good job hiding it.

Dipper was given the same attic as last time. It was about the least place that he would have liked to be in, but Gravity Falls had prepared it bed for him, and so he had better oblige. Wendy and Soos had taken Mabel's bed out of the attic because they didn't want to remember him of her, or something like that.

It just made it worse, honestly. Now Dipper can't sleep, looking at the fresh dust spot where the bed that had used to be Mabel's once covered. Also, the bed divided the room asymmetrically since Wendy/Soos forgot/didn't bother to move the bed to the center, hammering the idea of there being something _missing_ in this room into Dipper's head.

Dipper had cried himself to sleep.

* * *

The next day, there were no adventures of weirdness. Dipper, with the help of Soos, pushed the other bed up to the attic in preparation for his parents and Den's arrival. Soos had tried to talk to him, but Dipper just looked down and said "Shut it, Soos," every time. Eventually, they had hauled the other bed to the attic.

"Thanks," Dipper had said.

Soos then walked up to him and punched him square in the face, knocking him to the other side of the room and breaking his nose. "I saw your facebook profile. Mabel is gone. And you don't have anything to do with that. And… and... " Soos paused, and sat down on the bed that they had just brought up to the attic using all morning. "I miss her too. I… I… I miss her too, dude."

"Soos… no... you don't understand. She killed herself... I could have stopped her... she..." Dipper said to him, pained.

"No. Dude. I..." Soos's voice broke. "My dad. He was found dead in New York. Just January this year. Heart failure."

"I'm sorry..."

"He was... kind of a dick dude. Drugs flowing out of his pockets." the man-child gestured vaguely at the air.

"That's different, Soos! I COULD HAVE STOPPED HER! I LEFT HER IN A VULNERABLE STATE! I COULDN'T PROTECT HER!" Dipper desperately screamed at Soos. Tears blurred his vision. "Your dad... he wasn't the best person, ok? I'm sorry, Soos, but that's the truth. Mabel... she was THE DEAREST PERSON TO ME! I. LET. HER. DIE. _RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!_ _I saved the world, Soos! **HOW COULD I NOT HAVE THE STRENGTH TO WRESTLE A FUCKING GUN FROM A GIRL'S HAND****?"**_

Silence.

Dipper laid down on the dirty carpet.

Dipper took deep breaths. His nose was dripping some serious blood, staining Dipper's shirt with red regret.

Then, Soos ran downstairs. Dipper had thought that he had ditched him or something, and that their friendship was now over or whatever. But he came up again and handed him a pink gift box with anime faces plastered on it wrapped in plastic string.

Gingerly, Dipper pulled the string and ripped open the wrapper and the box within it… revealing… a pine tree hat. Just like the one he had three year ago.

"The Mystery Shack doesn't sell this kind of hat anymore," Soos said. "It ran out of stock two years back. This was the one you had three years ago. Wendy gave it to you."

"But... Wendy lost it."

"She did?" Soos said, puzzled. "But it's right here. We didn't steal it from her or anything. She gave it to Mr. Pines to modify or something. Anyways, mister Pines took it and did some sciencey mumbo jumbo. Now it'll grow to fit your head and never gets dirty. It's also fireproof now for some reason. Ha. Mr. Pines's nice."

Dipper nodded. He put the hat on.  
Cold nostalgia seeped through his body.  
The memories of Mabel that he'll never have again.

_DRIVING IN THE GOLF CART, ESCAPING THE GOLEM MADE OUT OF GNOMES... MABEL AND DIPPER IN STAN'S HEAD, FIGHTING BILL CIPHER... GIDEON... BURSTING THE BUBBLE AND ESCAPING FROM MABELAND... BEING HELD IN BILL CIPHER'S OWN HANDS, BUT FEELING ASSURED, FOR SOME REASON, BECAUSE THEY STILL HAD EACH OTHER...THE BIRTHDAY PARTY... SCHOOL... FIGHTING THE BULLIES WITH A SCHOOL CLARINET... DUCK-TECTIVES... GHOST HARASSERS... EVERYTHING..._

Dipper will never, never, never, have these memories again.

"Thanks, Soos. And thank Wendy for me." Dipper forced a smile.

"Uh... dude... your nose sure is dripping a lot of ketchup there."

Dipper had somehow forgotten about his nose. "Oh right. Thanks, man." He made a beeline for the closest source of kleenex, and started madly rubbing on his face.

Soos started to try to leave, but Dipper stopped him. "Next time... uh... don't punch me."

"Nah dude, punching is supposed to work. Mr Pine's book on therapy says it all. Not only is it dramatic as hell, it's extremely masculine! I don't have my brass knuckles on, so the effect might be a little off, but..."

"Soos, you know, for example, all of Grunkle Stan's books?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, burn them all."

* * *

"Three years later?" Bill screamed at the Axolotl, holding a bottle of aspirin in his hand instead of his cane. "This isn't part of the deal,Axel! You changed time! Three goddamned years later? Why three? Why not immediately so they get the lesson engraved in their head! What if you changed time? What if this wasn't supposed to happen?

"No harm done, Dipper." The Axolotl cooed. "Patience is key. Also if I did something wrong, Paradox would have taken your soul already."

"That's probably because he knows not to mess with me! You, on the other hand, are a giant lizard with tentacles sticking out of your head. He'll probably kill you and my resurrection will be compromised! And stop. Calling. Me. Dipper!" The bottle of aspirin turned into bazooka.

The triangle that used to be Mason Pines fired the bazooka at the Axolotl, but a cloud of cotton candy floated over and intercepted the attack.

"Why do you even care about a human concept anyways?" the Axolotl grabbed one of his cotton candy clouds and started idly playing with it.

"I've lived as a human for fifteen years and boy, can three years be long for a human." Bill said, still acerbic. Then, he thought about his situation and shrugged. "You know what? Time's irrelevant anyways. As long as I didn't vaporize."

"Yeah. How did you do it anyways?"

"Oh, played around with her brain a little. Mind bombs that would suddenly give me control without giving away my eyes."

"Why didn't you just fake an accident or something? That would have been much easier."

"Are you suggesting there are massive plot holes in my plan?" Bill jokingly said. "Oh well. Having her decapitate herself in front of past me and leaving brain juice all over the dinner table is much more traumatizing."

"Oh well." Axel shrugged. "Also can you stop referring to yourself in third person? It's weird."

"Whatever. Anyways, from now on, don't play retarded tricks on me. Also don't kill my family members without permission."

"I don't give a shit."

"Fuck you." Bill nodded. "OK, now what do we do?"

"So, I found this really Christian girl." Axolotl pulled out a file folder from one of his rainbow clouds with the name "Mackenzie Stuart Jones" written on it. "Let's see how much torture she can take before she goes full satanist. Cool?"

"No possession and shit? Only psychological tricks?"

"Of course no possession. You can, however, possess people she doesn't know. Anyways," the Axolotl opened two green portals. "It's a competition. Different universe, exactly the same people. Whoever does it first wins."

"Sounds dull. Everything you do is dull. But sure, why not."

* * *

Hey, this is dolt. Sucks to be my grandma cause she died 15 years ago. Also sucks to be my grandpa because he has diabetes. Anyways, random pieces of unnecessary information aside; I just didn't have any inspiration for the past, what, five months. Then I realized the storyline I had before really sucked and that was probably why. Still really thinks that the concept is intriguing, so decided to continue.

Also warning: my stories can get extremely dark. I might even change this to M later. So if you see it missing on the archives, just look in the M section or something.

Leave a comment if you have enjoyed. Theories, criticism, anything is fine. Cya

Edit: I don't know what happened, but some of my sentences got cut off randomly. Maybe the save button malfunctioned or something who knows anyways it's all fixed now. So that's good i guess


	3. Obsession

Last night, Wendy knocked on Dipper's door. Somehow, Wendy must've known that Dipper wasn't asleep or something like that.

"Hey, Dipper."

Dipper did not want to talk to Wendy right now. So he feigned to be asleep.

"Dipper, I know you're awake."

Dipper really didn't want to talk right now.

"I'm so sorry for losing your cap." she continued. "You entrusted it to me. And you still had mine for some reason... thanks a lot for that..."

Dipper opened his eyes the tiniest bit... over the nightlight, he could see that Wendy was there, wearing his blue-white pine tree cap. That she lost.

"I can see you squinting, man." Wendy chuckled. "So... yeah. I dug my entire house upside down and I found it. I know it means a lot to you, and it means a lot to me too."

Dipper tried to hold his tears from overflowing from his closed eyelid. Wendy probably couldn't see him crying anyways, the attic was pretty dim even with the flicker of the nightlight. But then again, she had saw him squinting... so yeah, she probably could see him crying too.

"I had lost it, but Soos told me to just pretend that I didn't. I'm a terrible liar." Wendy kept talking. "I... yeah. So uh..." Gently, Wendy took off Dipper's pine tree cap. "I had cleaned it, there shouldn't any dust left anymore." Then she placed it at Dipper's head. The cap was way too small for him now, of course. But all the dust particles from the bottom of the hat fell on his hair.

Wendy wasn't much of a hat cleaner. The thought made his lips tug.

"People must've told you, but uh... I don't work at the mystery shack anymore. Come find me in the forest if you want." Wendy mumbled. Then she ran off. Probably crying too and thinking about the deceased Mabel, judging by the way she phrased her last sentence and her sudden exit.

* * *

Den got to Gravity Falls two days later. However, as it turns out, Dipper parent's still couldn't come due to some business opportunities and should be due in about a week.

After Den got here, he and Dipper did the bro handshake. Then they played CS Go for the rest of the day. Den had never brought Mabel up. Dipper's guessing he didn't need the image of him crying stuck in his head.

That day, Stan and Ford and Soos went to take care of some mortgage issues of the Mystery Shack, so it was just Dipper and Den. Dipper only got to introduce the Mystery Shack members the next morning.

*Points at Soos* "This is Soos."

Den offered him a handshake, with Soos, loudly drinking out of a pitcher of Mabel juice, accepted.

"What are you drinking bro?" Den saw the dinosaur toys and offered a slightly awkward laugh.

"Oh... uh..." Soos looked at Dipper. "It's just fruit juice with dinosaurs in it. It enhances the flavor."

"How? Won't you inhale plastic particles and die?"

"Plastic tastes pretty good. They also cure cancer. Mr Pine's book on alternative medicine says it all!" Soos chuckled. "You know, I also suggest reese's crackers to cure diabetes. Works 30% of the time."

Meanwhile, Dipper was trying not to look at the Mabel juice that Soos was drinking. Mabel never told anyone the recipe... Soos had probably just improvised and put some dinosaur toys and glitter in a pitcher of Jamba Juice or something.

"Are those glitter? You're gonna get poisoned or something!"

"It'll be fine." Soos shrugged and walked away. Den ran after him, but Soos had already gone to wherever Soos goes when he's no longer needed, and there was no finding him.

"The thing that he was drinking... it's Mabel juice." Dipper told him with his face straight.

"Mabel juice? What the fuck? Ew!" Den made a mocking disgusted face.

"Not like that, you retarded hentai!" Dipper laughed, genuinely this time (A/N hentai is japanese for perv, I'm not Japanese tho). "What the fuck is wrong with you? It's juice that Mabel makes."

"That actually makes way too much sense." Den still joked, but his smile disappeared. "She put dinosaur toys and glitter in jamba juice? How many people did she..." Den probably tried to say "kill" or something, but decided that it was inappropriate, so stopped himself.

Den was socially awkward.

Dipper's smiles was short lived, and went back to being his gloomy self again. Dipper took Den down the secret passageway in the vending machine. He said something like whoa-whoa-holy-cow-this-is-some-seriously-cool-shit or something. Den and his Grunkles met. He liked Ford, but had a large beef with Grunkle Stan because his book about alternative medicine.

"Oh, you've read that?" Stan gave Den a toothy con-man grin. "Yeah, that was a good one. I've also written books about therapy, the geocentric model, and how God is fake. They're available as souvenirs in the shop, you can buy some if you want." At that point, Den looked like that he was trying to punch Stan in the face, so Dipper had to drag him away while he shouted stuff like "the law enforcement will hear about this!"

But, never piss off a con man. After lunch, Stan declared that electronics are now off limit due to something that Dipper's parents said and confiscated them. He also said "If you, uh, suck me up enough, I'll give you the computers back."

* * *

That afternoon, Dipper showed Den around the anomalies of Gravity Falls that Den had not believed and had claimed that they were photoshopped. Den's face when Dipper showed him the gnomes, the manotaurs, the multibear, the bunker (with the cryofrozen copy of Dipper from three years ago still there).

Den's face… it was the face of a blind man seeing light for the first time. It was actually really funny.

After that, Dipper and Den went to the woods to find Wendy. Dipper thanked her for the hat, how it made him recover a little bit and everything. He also conversed with Toby Determined for a while. Then, he introduced Den to Gideon and Pacifica, two people Den seemed to be fine with. Pacifica's family apparently reacquired the Northwest manor from McGucket, who had moved away and was now working with the US government. Mr. and Mrs Northwest still trying to groom her into the aristocratic asshole but was failing and only adding to her rebelliousness, which became, as Dipper noticed, became extremely pronounced in her teenage years. They spend the rest of the afternoon reading Ford's journal 1.

At the night, when everyone had gone to sleep, Dipper got into the shack's hidden room (where Stan had kept all the stolen ID and stuff from three years ago), trying to find his computer. Just as Dipper had thought, Stan had hid the computers there. And then they played CS Go for the rest of the night until like what, three in the morning.

Now, with Den soundly asleep and nothing else to think about, thoughts of Mabel started bothering him again. She's... she's just dead. She died in front of him. He was unable to do anything. But... now that he's in Gravity Falls... the concentration of everything magical in this world... is there a way to bring Mabel back from the afterlife?

Dipper supposed... if a one-eyed demon that can levitate can exist... why can't there be necromancy? Either in the form of magic or some kind of technology. There had to be something... something...

Dipper played out his entire adventure in Gravity Falls from three years ago, frame by frame. Gnomes... McGucket's fake shark... wax Sherlock Holmes... printers... THE GHOSTS FROM THE STORE. Maybe... that could work?

But he was fifteen now. He qualified as a teen. There was no way the ghosts would let him get one step in the shop before trapping him a video game or something. Uhh... wait five years? No, he couldn't afford to.

What if he went to Globnar and get another time wish? How does time wishes even work? Is it like, time baby goes back in time fulfills the wishes himself, or do the wishes just have magical powers that grants whatever you want? Probably the former, because they can just wish time baby dead, theoretically. If time baby wasn't a masochist, that probably wasn't the case.

So... Dipper just has to go get a wish from time baby. But... that letter from Blendin Blandin or whatever his name is said that Time Baby was dead! God, that was in the back of his damn head for so long. He still had the letter and everything, safely tucked into journal 3. Now... now what?

Sleep?

Dipper tried to do just that for an hour. The sun was rising by now... he had to get some goddamned sleep, but Mabel's face prevented him from doing anything like that. Den's loud snores from the other bed didn't exactly help. What was he supposed to do? So, he went downstairs and grabbed a couple of Stan's sleeping pills. Chugging them down, and crashed on the couch.

* * *

When Dipper woke up, it was four in the afternoon. By then, the mystery shack was brimming with life. Apparently, Soos had improvised and made Dipper into an attraction which he dubbed "Sleeping Beauty 2 Electric Boogaloo", and was making up some story about how he ended up there.

When he stirred, Soos lit up and beamed at him "Dipper, you're awake! Man, can you sleep for ten more minutes" his voice turned into a whisper "for the crowd?" Soos gestured at the people on the left of him.

Sure, why not. Frowning, he went back to sleep as Soos told the rest of his preposterous story.

After that, Dipper went and found Den. He was downstairs, spending time with Grunkle Ford while making edits with a red pen in Grunkle Ford's _Stan's Guide to Alternative Medicine_.

"Hey Dipper. You just woke up too?" Den greeted him and they did their secret handshake. "Does your grand uncle legitimately believe that staring at this picture" Den showed him a stock photo of an avocado, printed in the book "will cure diabetes?"

"Stan's nuts," Ford smiled.

"Where is Grunkle Stan anyways?" Dipper asked Ford, rubbing his eyes. Then he got a look at what Ford was tinkering at.

A statue of Bill Cipher, encased in a weird bubble.

Instinctively, Dipper took three steps backwards. "Ford, what are you doing?"

"Manly Dan found this in the forest and asked my to take a look at it." Ford said. "It appears to be fossilized."

"Fossilized?"

"Fossilized. It used to be Cipher's bone structure that he generated at the start of weirdmageddon." Ford said to Dipper absentmindedly. "Somehow, under normal conditions, fossilization is occurring. And at this rate." Ford gestured at the Bill fossil.

"Have you dated?"

"Yeah. Carbon-14 dating. The remaining skeletal structure still has almost all of it. The statue's from three years ago; not like our friend Dan excavated it from a hole he dug in his backyard or something. And there's nothing abnormal in the bones that haven't been touched by fossilization. There's no DNA in them, though, but based on the makeup, they're a mix of animal bones and insect exoskeleton originating from Gravity Falls."

"What?"

"No amount of anomalous research had prepared me for Bill Cipher. Or what is happening here." Ford shrugged, going back to the statue. "The Cipher statue theoretically cannot fossilize anymore now that it can no longer acquire material in the vacuum bubble I put it in. But it may surprise me," Ford gave a weak grin.

Dipper nodded, pulling up a random chair and sat on it.

"Also, uh, Dipper? Through my twenty years of research, I have never come across a way to bring people back from the dead, apart from them being reborn as zombies. I'm sorry."

There was a long pause. Den stared awkwardly.

"I see." Dipper stood up mechanically. "You've read me again, Ford." Something had broken inside him; maybe he had expected to get Mabel back as soon as he reached Gravity Falls. "Did you try to build one?"

"Yes, Dipper, he did." Den interrupted. "Why do you think he's wearing an eye patch?"

An eye patch...? Dipper looked up on Ford's face. Yep, there it was, a black eye patch, clear as day on Ford's skin, that somehow Dipper had failed to notice from all the time he had stayed in there. How had he not noticed in the FIVE DAYS that he interacted with Ford?

Den, at the awkward pause, mumbled something, and then went back to editing Stan's alt. medicine book.

This proves nothing, Dipper said to himself. Ford had only been trying for two week. He'll come up with something soon. Also, if a scientific approach doesn't work, he can just go to the convenience store or something.

"I'll... I'll be upstairs," Dipper mumbled, then hurried took his leave.

* * *

But he won't be going upstairs.

* * *

He now had a greater goal... a mystery that was greater than anything he had ever solved. How to bring someone back from the dead.

* * *

So... yeah. That was chapter 3. Review and comment for ideas. Probably won't be posting for a while though; got school stuff to deal with


	4. Like a Phoenix

A/N Hello, welcome to the fanfic about Gravity Falls. I really liked the series. Then, being optimist I am, I began imagining... corruption. How do I, as the author and the puppet master, warp Dipper's sanity so much that he becomes Bill Cipher and destroys the world? Yeah, this story will probably be crap. Won't stop me from updating every three years tho

* * *

THE CONVENIENCE STORE

Dipper took deep breaths, trying to force all of his teenage hormones and body odor out of himself. But unfortunately, it couldn't work. Also, Grunkle Ford probably didn't have any technology to reverse aging and turn Dipper into his twelve year old self; otherwise, he and Stan wouldn't be old men reeking of moth balls anymore. So Dipper had to risk it.

And yeah, Dipper would say it was worth the risk. On the 1% chance that the old couple didn't kill us, and the 1% chance that they actually knew how to bring others back from the dead, getting Mabel back would be all worth it. Dipper had to do it- there were no other choices. If the had killed him... oh well.

The store had changed a lot during the three years that Dipper wasn't present. Apparently, after scamming his way into the billionaire leagues again, Pacifica's father attempted to get his house back from McGucket. Apparently, that didn't go that well, and ended with him getting several second-degree burns with McGucket's defense systems.

But... as Mr. Northwest once said, "A billionaire needs a mansion." Dipper knows because Pacifica told him.

So, against the many discouragements from Grunkle Ford, he blackmailed some government officials and made some phone calls and acquired the junkyard. Immediately, he started working on demolishing the store and building a new mansion from scratch.

But... as it turns out, the two ghosts didn't like that.

One night, before the big project was supposed to begin, all the demolition workers and the architects that the Northwest family hired got out of the cabins in the wood that they were staying in, and, in a single-file line, marched towards the convenience store. Then, once they got in the convenience store, they jumped into the video games machine and were trapped there. Ford had to use some rare rune that they got from their adventure to the arctic circle to free them.

Yeah, that made real headlines. Having some of the best architects in history all say that they were sucked into a Dance Dance Revolution machine were actually really newsworthy stuff.

Meanwhile, people refused to work to demolish a store whose arcades sucked hundreds of people into the game and imprisoned them within until an old dude with six fingers waved a piece of paper around. So, the Northwests had to settle for a random apartment until McGucket sold the manor to work in Area 51 or some shadowy government entity. Unfortunately, under McGucket's "care", many of the old Northwest family relics were gone.

Anyways, Mr. Northwest pressed charges against McGucket, but McGucket won. They, through various blackmailing and other shit, Northwest attempted to have the shadowy government entity that McGucket was involved with. Yeah, they fired him, but unfortunately, McGucket had seen too much. So, the US Government made McGucket sign a nondisclosure agreement worth thirty-one million bucks.

All this back and forth have actually cost a great deal of the Northwest fortune, so the family decided to move to New York or something. Pacifica went with them. From what Pacifica told him from his (and Den's) brief exchange with her, she had to agree to a bunch of "stupid socialite things that would waste her life" before the Northwest family allowed her to even go to Gravity Falls on her break.

And now Den thinks Dipper has a crush on Pacifica. Dipper really doesn't though, and he highly doubts that Pacifica has any sort of romantic feelings towards him either. Ah well... well, back to the convenience store.

* * *

Anyways, the store had changed a lot since his last visit.

1\. Electric barbed fences had been installed on the sides to keep people out. Ford's jumping shoes can solve this, no problem.

2\. There were also several motion sensors running inside the parameter, all airdropped since the store apparently ate up any government personnel that stepped in a radius of about fifteen meters. With a decent pair of binoculars, not even one enhanced by weirdness, Dipper could see the blinking red lights that they were emitting, done purposefully to discourage people from visiting.

3\. Fortunately, no guards.

Ford said that weirdness distorted technology. Cameras are entirely unreliable, as they either get no signal or even receive false images (Ford called this "wavelength hallucination" and apparently it's caused by joint alternate dimension?) So, they'd have to rely on motions sensors, which according to stuff in Journal 2 does work. However, there's a good chance that the motion sensors were malfunctioning still functional, since they only tried to airdrop stuff in once.

Dipper's plan: steal one of Ford's invisible drones. Program it to move around randomly at extremely fast speeds for several days. This will probably fool the people whose job it is to stare constantly at the motion sensors. Then, after they become used to a random dot popping all over their grid, Dipper get the fuck in and... hopefully doesn't die get cursed to play Dance Dance Revolution for the rest of his life...?

The moment of truth. Hopefully the cranky old ghosts living inside doesn't determine that random drones moving at fast speeds were unholy and swallow it up or something. Dipper grabbed the preprogrammed drone from his pocket - a black orb the size of an eightball, about the same weight as one too - and forehand threw it into the store. Then, Dipper opened the app on his phone to check how it was working. But, you know what? If the two ghosts left government motion sensors intact, they would probably leave the drones too.

Yep. The eight ball was now zooming randomly throughout the store, bouncing back in when it gets to just the edge. Hopefully it was showing up on motion sensors, too. If it wasn't (Dipper would be able to tell they couldn't pick the drone up if another airdrop doesn't happen in, what, like three days?) ... well... Dipper... he'd probably have to get the shrinking flashlight to get smaller then the ball. He'd been hoping to avoid that, because 1) Stan lost the flashlight, so he'll have to scour the forest to get his hands on that crystal again and 2) he doesn't want to deal with ants twice your size. Ever. Again.

So... yeah. Thus was his plan. Nothing complicated, not a lot of stuff that human beings with common sense won't be able to think about in twenty minutes. Now... to see how it works.

* * *

The Mystery Shack

"HEY DIPPER! DUDE! DUDE! GREAT NEWS!" when he saw Dipper coming back, Soos, immediately lit up and ran up to him.

"What, Soos?"

"We called this place."

"What place?"

Soos gave the Soos chuckle. "It doesn't matter. It's a place. They're gonna get the S in our logo fixed!"

"...What?"

"You know how the Mystery Shack title was always missing an 'S' on the 'Shack'? They're getting that fixed, dude!"

"Oh? Wasn't the missing 'S' like trademark Mystery Shack by now? You can't get rid of that! Ahh God Soos. You do you. I'll go to my room."

Soos's smile disappeared. "OK dude. I'll think about it."

So Dipper went the attic. And all hell broke loose.

* * *

Den was watching porn. He was doing nothing else, just staring intently at the screen. But, nevertheless, he was watching porn. Dipper could hear the moans and everything. But Den was just lying on the bed, with a smile that was far too wide to be human on his face.

Dipper had walked in. The lights were off, but Dipper could distinctly hear moaning on the computer.

"Den... what the hell are you watching?"

Silence. Den didn't blush in shame (well, probably not, since Dipper couldn't really see his face), turn off the volume, or anything else. But something told Dipper that he heard.

More silence.

Dipper tried to flip the light switch to turn the lights on, but it didn't work. A power outage? No, seeing that all the lights downstairs are turned on and Soos was still vacuuming the floor. So... probably not.

"Den. Den?" Dipper was getting scared. Randomly watching porn and not turning it off when Dipper came in could only mean one thing. "Den... I'm flattered and all... but... I'm not... I'm not gay, I don't want to do this..."

No reply. Yeah, Dipper was probably wrong. The moaning continued, and that was clearly a woman, so Den can't be gay. He's probably bi or something.

"If you must know..." Den spoke, slowly. It didn't sound like Den. The voice sounded... scratchy and distorted and had a deep demonic overlay on it. Maybe it was Dipper's eyes finally adjusting to the darkness or something, but now Den's face became visible.

Den had on a grin that tore his face in half. The whites of his eyes were yellow.

"...PINE TREE," Den's voice... Bill Cipher's voice... turned into a snarl.

"I was getting an update on human pop culture. Naked women looks pretty sick! Look at her go, Pine Tree!" Bill proceeded to show the screen to Dipper, who immediately covered his eyes and looked down.

"HAHAHAHAHA! You humans are so classic! You would rather not look at a bunch of pictures naked woman..." Den stood up from the bed.

"THEN LOOK AT THE BEING THAT COULD KILL YOU WHENEVER, WHEREVER, AND HOWEVER IT WANTS?" with superhuman strength, Billlpunched Dipper in the face, breaking Dipper's nose and sending him flying, knocking him to a wall.

Dipper groaned in pain and screamed. "HELP! SOOS! FORD! IT'S BILL! IT'S BILL!"

"No one can hear you, Pine Tree!" Bill screamed, throwing his computer still playing max volume porn at his face. Maybe on purpose, maybe not, the computer just missed his face and hit the wall besides him, the glass shattering. Den took out a knife from his pocket and pressed it at his neck.

"Pine Tree. Don't sweat it. I'm your friend. I'll let you go. If you answer this trivia question."

Dipper couldn't talk. So he just nodded.

Den cleared his throat, and then pulled out a notecard from his pocket. "Alright, Pine Tree. DRUMROLL... What is the singular form of the word 'graffiti'?"

"What...?"

"It appears you didn't hear me, Pine Tree. Let me fix that." Den snapped his fingers, and suddenly his ear grew ten times its original size, and apparently thousands of time more sensitive. He heard cockroaches crawling in the carpet, feel wind rustling against everything. And... Soos's vacuum cleaner became deafening. Dipper screamed in horror, which sounded like hydraulic presses repeatedly beating and crushing his eardrum.

"WHAT... IS... THE... SINGULAR... FORM... OF... THE... WORD... GRAFFITI?"

HOW THE FUCK WAS DIPPER SUPPOSED TO KNOW? HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT THE WORD "GRAFFITI" WAS A PLURAL! The oncoming barrage of sound made it impossible to think or do anything. Dipper was literally going to drop dead at any minute now.

"Well, Pine Tree?" this sounded like Den was shouting falsetto right next to his year.

OK. OK. OK. Pine tree grabbed his overgrown ear and covered it as much as he could. It wasn't much better.

"Graffiti" was obviously Italian. In order to make an Italian word plural, you change the last vowel. "A" goes to an "E". Both "O" and "E" goes to "I". "E" was the most used letters of the Italian alphabet. So... "graffite?" Dipper did not know how to pronounce that.

"G-R-A-F-F-I-T-E." Dipper rasped, sounding each letter carefully. "Am I right?"

With Bill's yellow eyes, Den examined Dipper carefully. "I don't know… is it?" Den flipped over the notecard, but apparently not seeing an answer. "Well, let's let human technology do the work!" Still with his knife pressed to Dipper's throat, Den tried to get the obviously broken computer besides him to turn on. Obviously, it didn't.

"Hmmm… interesting. Well, you're off the hook then. When you go to sleep the next time, I'll be waiting to tell you whether you got it or not!"

* * *

Dipper was snapped back to reality, standing in front of door leading to the attic. Den saw Dipper and said something like "hey, sup, where did you go?"

Dipper just stood there, completely frozen.

"Dipper, are you okay? Well, here's a trivia question. What's the singular form of 'graffiti'?"

That snapped Dipper back to reality. "What did you just say?"

"Trivia question. What is the singular form of the word 'graffiti'?"

Dread welled in Dipper's stomach. He swallowed bile.

"I know this one. G-R-A-F-F-I-T-E?"

Den had a smug look on his face. "Hmm."

"Well?" cold sweat dribbled down his hair, greasing up the insides of his clothes. "I... am I right?"

"Dude, you're sweating a lot. Are you good?" Den's smile - the smile that looked disturbingly like the expression of someone who just outsmarted someone else - turned into a concerned frown. "You look like you're having a panic attack."

"No, goddamn it, Den, tell me. Did I get the answer!"

"Dude, Dipper, chill. Tell me man, are you g-"

"JUST TELL ME!" Dipper's insides felt like they were shrivelling up. The logic in his brain seemed to have left - instinctively, he began shouting. "Please, Den, just** fucking** _**TELL ME**_!"

"Dude, are you sure- "

"_DAMN IT DEN!_"

"No! No, okay? You got it wrong. Chill!" Den's microexpressions told Dipper that he was scared. "Are you good, man? Sure I get Ford or..."

But Dipper was no longer listening.

"_WHEN YOU SLEEP NEXT TIME, I'LL BE WAITING TO TELL YOU IF YOU GOT IT OR NOT!_" Bill Cipher's last word rang in Dipper's head. He was just bluffing. He was obviously. Fucking _OBVIOUSLY_. Just bluffing. He won't be waiting in Dipper's sleep to tell him if he got it or not.

After all, he was dead. Grunkle Ford had wiped Stan's brain and wiped Cipher out permanently. It was kind of stupid that he couldn't just write "Bill Cipher" on the memory gun and just wipe out Bill and leave the rest of Stan's memory intact, but that was all fine.

To think about it, actually, didn't all of Stan's memory come back?

**_THEN WHY COULDN'T BILL?_**

No. Obviously he died with the rest of Weirdmageddon.

_**OBVIOUSLY. **_

It was all a coincidence. Everything. _**EVERYTHING WAS JUST A MASSIVE COINCIDENCE. THE REALITY'S WAY OF FREAKING DIPPER OUT**_.

"Dipper... are you sure I shouldn't get Ford or something?" Again, he was snapped back into reality but Den's rather high-pitched voice. "Because... you... you... you were staring off into space,"

Dipper took deep breaths. For some inexplicable reason, Dipper pretended everything was fine. "Oh, I'm good, no need. Den, where did you get the question?" Dipper forced a nervous laugh.

"Oh, a one-eyed demon told me to tell it to you." Den laughed, as if thinking that it was the punchline to some joke. Then the smile turned into a frown. "I... I don't know why I made that joke. That really wasn't funny, was it?"

Dipper's heart skipped a beat at the "_a one-eyed demon_" part. "You... you mean Bill Cipher?"

"Who?" Den looked genuinely confused. "Oh, that one-eyed demon story that you used to tell when we were thirteen? I almost forgot about that. That was a joke, bro. You must chill."

No, Dipper was definitely not going to fucking _chill_. "Seriously, Den. Where did you find the question?"

"Oh, random trivia generator I found on the internet. Weird-ass name for a website. ." Den flipped the computer so Dipper could also see it. He cringed, remember seeing the Bill Cipher possessed Den watched porn.

It was a simple interface. The question "WHAT IS THE SINGULAR FORM OF GRAFFITI" were placed on yellow flashcards in large, noticeable 48-point Lucidan Blackletter. You could tap the flashcard to reveal the answer: "Graffito". Under the flashcard: there were a heart button to save the fact, and a large orange "generate" button to get a new flashcard.

"Never seen the site before," Dipper pulled out his own computer, opened his search engine, and typed . The site took about five seconds to connect. The same exact interface showed up. Dipper clicked generate a few times and browsed.

_When was the Illuminati conspiracy founded? May 1st, 1776_

_What does csc stand for in trigonometry? Consocant_

_What is the Triangle Sum Theorem in Geometry? A theorem used in geometric proofs that states "the three angles of a triangle add up to 180_

_Who is Bill Cipher? The sole owner of humanity_

* * *

Well, that's chapter 4. I had a lot of fun describing Bill's insanity, it's a lot of fun to write. Mentioning the word "porn" probably won't elevate this fic to an M or something. Review and comment about theories and other stuff! See you about half a year later!


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